pennyspoetryfandomcom-20200214-history
Chester Kallman
Chester Simon Kallman (January 7, 1921 - January 18, 1975) was an American poet, librettist, and translator, best known for his collaborations with W.H. Auden and Igor Stravinsky. Life Kallman was born in New York City, the son of Edward Kallman, a Brooklyn dentist. He received a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan. He has been depicted sensitively by Thekla Clark in her Wystan and Chester: A personal memoir of W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman (1996). Clark tells how Auden met Kallman in 1939, how they fell in love, and how they were partners for 35 years. Auden described Kallman as being a good-looking "Roumanian-Latvian-American Jew.” Clark, however, termed Kallman an atheist. The 2 had met at a time when Auden was a lover of Harold Norse, but they became lovers “mad with happiness.” However, Kallman was not the monogamous kind, and he enraged the jealous Auden, once being choked by the poet. Although they remained friends, they found that their relationship turned sexless. One of Kallman’s many lovers, 21-year-old Yannis Boras, was a Greek with whom he stayed for five years, until Boras was killed in an automobile accident. According to Clark, Kallman’s libretto for the opera Elegy for Young Lovers, was inspired by their relationship, after which Kallman looked for other young Greeks as companions. Concerned as he grew older that he was losing his “Lana Turner looks,” Kallman moved about, seldom informing Auden where he was. Clark depicts Kallman with affection, for she allowed him to stay at her home in Florence and he wrote to her extensively. Of the fights Kallman had with Auden, Clark observed, “As a devout Christian, Wystan was satisfied . . . to let ‘Miss God’ pardon him. Chester, as a romantic atheist, couldn’t.” The early idyllic stretches of their affair inspired the most beautiful of modern love poems: : Warm are the still and lucky miles, : White shores of longing stretch away. Kallman and Auden, Clark noted, got along best when they collaborated on librettos. Wystan, she noted, thought homosexuality was wrong whereas Kallman regarded it as both a moral lifestyle and beautiful. Wystan “wanted a certain blond beauty in his lovers.” Kallman preferred “beetle brows.” Although Kallman wrote the libretto for “The Tuscan Women,” which was set to music by Carlos Chávez, he has become mainly remembered as a one-time lover of W. H. Auden. Kallman wrote the libretto for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951). He and Auden collaborated on a number of libretto translations, notable The Magic Flute (1956) and Don Giovanni (1961). Kallman translated many operas, including Verdi's Falstaff (1954) and Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea (1954). Kallman was bright and warm and lucky, though not at all still, which turned out to be a problem. He was "out" in a way that Auden had never encountered before in someone he saw as a peer - with no self-doubt or even ironic self-inquiry about his sexual tastes. In 2 years, Auden went from the furtive English schoolboy's "buggerdom" to the bel-canto opera and camp of Greenwich Village and Fire Island. He and Kallman ended up in drag out on the Island, with Auden dressed up as a cardinal - a Firbank cardinal, but a cardinal. Kallman died in Athens, Greece. Memories of Chester Kallman by Lisa Kallman (Chester's niece) : My father - Matt (Malcolm) Kallman - was a half brother of Chester’s father, Edward Kallman; though he was always offended by the “half”, because Chester was there the day he was born. My dad loved him intensely and was heartbroken when their family fragmented. Chester was sent to live with his grandmother and grandfather. : Chester’s mother died when he was only five or six; her name was Bertie (Bertha) and family legend has it that she was an actress in the Yiddish Theater. My grandfather was, as you noted, a dentist, and also an amateur painter. William Kallman, Edward's son, never lived with my father or Chester. I don't think Chester ever met him. My grandfather never married his mother, but adopted "Billy." I met him only at my grandfather's funeral. : There is a website Stanford University has been compiling of Chester and Wystan’s family information. : The jpeg I gave attached is Chester’s high school photo. He graduated from Lincoln HS in Brooklyn. : Thekla Clark’s book is my favorite written about Chester. She knew him intimately, whereas so many others describe him from a distance, as the promiscuous villain who broke Wystan’s heart, never really capturing the many layers of love, friendship and collaboration they shared over a lifetime. Chester was only 18 when he met Auden, not ready for the marital relationship Wystan hoped for; why would he be at that age, in all his luscious glory! ? : When I was eighteen I visited Chester in Athens, where he died one year later. He had lived in Europe many years and I had not seen him since my early childhood. The vivid memory of his open-hearted love and acceptance of me is unforgettable. I had never felt so seen, so witnessed. The sense of him I internalized then is profoundly different from the reams of awful descriptions I have read. It makes me feel so sad for him, and I wish that his true nature was better represented. Thekla’s book finally manifested and breathed life into the loving, breathtakingly witty and fabulously uncensored Chester I remember. : I was happy to read your compassionate article, and hope the greater reality of Chester continues to emerge.{Lisa Kallman, e-mail to Warren Allen Smith, 4 March 2009} Publications Poetry *''An Elegy'' (pamphlet). New York: Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 1951. *''Storm at Castelfranco''. New York: Grove Press, 1956. *''Absent and Present''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1963. *''To Yannis Boras''. Athens, Greece: privately published, 1969. *''The Sense of Occasion: Poems''. New York: George Braziller, 1971. Libretti *''The Rake's Progress: Opera in three acts'' (with W.H. Auden; music by Igor Stravinsky) New York: Boosey & Hawkes, 1951. *''Delia, or A masque of night'' (with W.H. Auden; ; never set to music). Botteghe Oscure XII, 1953. *''Elegy for Young Lovers'' (with W.H. Auden; for music by Hans Werner Henze). Mainz, Germany: B. Schott, 1961. *''Love Propitiated'' (for music by Carlos Chavez]]; first performed as Panfilo and Lauretta, 1957, then as Love Propitated, 1961). New York: Mills Music, 1963 *''The Bassarid]'' (with W.H. Auden; for music by Hans Werner Henze). Mainz, Germany: B. Schott, 1966. *''Love's Labour's Lost: Comedy set to music'' (with W.H. Auden; for music by Nicolas Nabokov). Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1972.. *''Libretti, and other dramatic writings by W.H. Auden, 1939-1973'' (with Auden; edited by Edward Mendelson). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. *''The Judgement of Calliope: A satyr play'' (for music by Hans Werner Henz). Mainz, Germany, & New York: Schott, 2000. Translated *''Bluebeard's Castle: Opera in one act'' (translation of the libretto by Béla Balázs for the opera by Béla Bartók). New York: Boosey & Hawkes, 1952. *''Falstaff: A lyric comedy in three acts'' (translation of the libretto of the opera by Boito). New York: G. Ricordi, 1954. *''The Magic Flute: An opera in two acts'' (with W.H. Auden; for an NBC Opera Theatre production of the opera by Mozart). New York: Random House, 1956. *''Anne Boleyn: Opera in two acts and six scenes'' (translation of the libretto by Felice Romani for the opera by Donizetti). New York: G. Ricordi, 1959. *''The Prize Fight'' (translation of the libretto by Luciano Conosciani for Vieri Tosatti's opera Partita a Pugni). Milan: Ricordi, 1959. *''Don Giovanni: Opera in two acts'' (with W.H. Auden; for an NBC Opera Theatre production of the opera by Mozart). New York: G. Schirmer, 1961. *Bertolt Brecht, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (with W.H. Auden). Boston: D.R. Godine, 1976. *''Arcifanfano, King of Fools'' (pbd. with a recording, 1992, with W.H. Auden, after the opera by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf). Edited *''An Elizabethan Song Book'' (with W.H. Auden & Noah Greenberg). New York: Anchor Books, 1955 **also published as An Anthology of Elizabethan Lute Songs, Madrigals, and Rounds. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956; New York: Norton, 1970. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Chester Kallman, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Oct. 14, 2014. Recognition Auden included his poetry in the Faber Book of Modern American Verse. See also * List of U.S. poets References * Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden: A biography (1981). * Dorothy J. Farnan, Auden in Love (1984) * Thekla Clark, Wystan and Chester (1995). * Richard Davenport-Hines, Auden (1996) Notes External links ;Poems *Five poems in Poetry, April 1954 ;Books *Chester Kallman at Amazon.com ;About * Chester Kallman at NNDB. * [http://www.enotes.com/chester-kallman-criticism/kallman-chester review of The Sense of Occasion]. *"I saw this face, and I fell in love" at The Telegraph *"We're A Funny Pair: The Gay Love Letters of W. H. Auden to Chester Kallman at Gay History & Literature * This article uses Creative Commons licensed text from Philosophopedia. Original article is at Chester Kallman. Category:1921 births Category:1975 deaths Category:American poets Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Opera librettists Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:Brooklyn College alumni Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Writers from New York City Category:Jewish American writers Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets